There’s a reason Bobby Jindal said Republicans sounded like “the stupid party.” In fact, there’s more than a dozen reasons.
What a difference a year can make. Except when it doesn’t.
Just under a year ago, Bobby Jindal called on his Republican Party to “stop being the stupid party,” pointing to conservative lawmakers who had made “offensive and bizarre comments.” Jindal declared: “I’m here to say we’ve had enough of that.”
And in a so-called “autopsy” report, the Republican National Committee examined its big 2012 election loss and admitted it desperately needed a makeover. Among the gripes: many view the GOP as a group of “stuffy old men,” an entity at which “young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes.” Minorities, said the report, “wrongly think Republicans do not like them.”
But over the last year, has anything changed? From Republicans still refusing to acknowledge President Obama was born in America, to the continued use of derogatory terms to describe undocumented immigrants, to conservatives declaring “victory” on the partial government shutdown, the GOP seems bent on self-sabotage.
Maybe 2014 will bring real change. While we wait, let’s revisit the highlights (and low points) of 2013.